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Close the Gap App™ (sponsored by GoDaddy) is a powerful online tool that takes you on a guided deep dive into your career path. It's like having your very own career or business coach on your desktop or mobile device.

Collaboratively designed by She Negotiates' co-founders Lisa Gates and Victoria Pynchon, and author and leadership expert Gloria Feldt of Take the Lead, you can now close that pesky wage and leadership gap for good.

You'll start by capturing your education, experience, strengths and accomplishments, and then you'll build on that by defining your short and longterm goals.

You'll redefine your relationship with power and learn to navigate the typical roadblocks standing in your way and chart your course as the CEO of your own life.

You'll also learn how to create career narratives or stories to help you ace your interviews and present yourself with clarity and authority.

Then you'll assess your network and support systems and build your relationships strategically with an Influence Plan.

The shared goal of Take the Lead and She Negotiates is to eliminate the wage and leadership gap by 2025. With the skill-building exercises and videos in The Gap App, you won't be waiting until 2025. In the short time it takes to complete the App you'll research your market value, learn the necessary strategies to negotiate it, and close your wage gap now.

After completing the APP, you can join Take the Lead's community of women, powered by Mightybell. So, if you're ready to kickstart your career or business, join a brilliant community of women who are getting it done. And for 10 bucks, there is nothing standing in your way.

Top kudos and credit goes to Kendra Grant of Kendra Grant Consulting who served as our Learning Architect and Project Lead, and Josh Hoover of WP Bench who built and coded the App with his head, heart and hands.

HAVE FUN, AND PLEASE DO EMAIL US WITH YOUR FEEDBACK, QUESTIONS AND REQUESTS ONCE YOU'VE COMPLETED THE APP.

YOU'RE INVITED TO AN EVENING OF PURPOSEFUL NETWORKING, COCKTAILS & HEALTHY SKIN ON OCTOBER 17

On Thursday, October 17th, please join me and seven #RemarkableWomen co-hosts for an evening of creating new opportunities through new relationships (click to tweet)--in partnership with our fabulous sponsor, Dermalogica. Don't miss out on this opportunity to meet our amazing group of co-hosts and mentors trail blazing in fitness, wellness, entrepreneurship, fashion, social change, marketing, social media, tech and more (see below for list). Plus, form new relationships with fellow attendees who, like you, are passionate about helping women. Whether it's meeting new clients or partners, making introductions, gaining insight into an industry or advice that can propel you to the next level- that's what happens at our events. SPACE IS LIMITED. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER (cocktails & gift bag included!)

Click on each name to learn more about each #RemarkableWoman you'll meet!

On Thursday, October 17th, please join Claudia Chan and seven #RemarkableWomen co-hosts for an evening of creating new opportunities through new relationships (click to tweet)--in partnership with our fabulous sponsor, Dermalogica.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to meet Claudia's amazing group of co-hosts and mentors trail blazing in fitness, wellness, entrepreneurship, fashion, social change, marketing, social media, tech and more (see below for list).

Plus, form new relationships with fellow attendees who, like you, are passionate about helping women. Whether it's meeting new clients or partners, making introductions, gaining insight into an industry or advice that can propel you to the next level- that's what happens at our events.

Referred to as “the aspirational Facebook for women” by Forbes.com, “SHE Who Must Be Obeyed” by the The Daily Beast, “Intrepid Woman” by The Glass Hammer, “a motivational media head women in charge” by Cosmopolitan Magazine--Claudia has been featured in countless media outlets including the Aol/PBS initiative “Makers: Women Who Make America.” She also speaks on women’s leadership at corporations, universities, conferences and is looking forward to her first TEDx talk in Fall 2013.

In the context of negotiation, professors John Rizzo of Stony Brook University and Richard Zeckhauser of Harvard University asked a group of young physicians about their reference groups and salary aspirations.

In addition, men’s salary reference points were more indicative than women’s of how much they earned later.

Finally, women tend to compare themselves to particular individuals whom they know, while men tend to assess themselves according to information about typical behavior.

Here's a simple solution to this problem. Research your market value in your specialty in your geographic area on payscale.com or glassdoor.com. If those resources aren't sufficient, pick up the telephone and make a few inquiries about compensation in your area.

Here's what I ask when I do this for clients.

Hi, I'm Vickie Pynchon. I'm a ___________ (attorney, author, consultant - whatever seems the best identity to get an answer to my question). I'm doing some market research on compensation for software designers/commercial litigators/OB-GYNs. Can you give me an idea of what people in that area with X years of experience are making/charging clients/etc.

With a mission to transform lives, She Negotiates gives women the tools and support to take responsibility for closing their own personal income and leadership gaps. “We start with the pocketbook because economic power is political power. And without political power, we have no voice. No presence. No platform. No credibility,” the site says. What sets She Negotiates apart? They know the personal, cultural and political landscapes that impact one’s ability to ask for what they want and move forward. The site publishes blogs posts and book recommendations, and offers virtual training, video tutorials, as well as consulting services for a fee.

If you are a consultant or solopreneur and you're offering a free consultation to give potential clients a slice, a sense of your value and skill, how is it going? Is it working? Or are you letting people pick your brain for free and off they go?

I think we all understand the motivation. You want to be of service, and to be known and valued so that people hire you.

But if we're truthful, the deeper motivation for giving our best stuff away is that we feel squeamish about asking for our value up front. Instead, we do the job before we get the job. Not good for wallets, reputations and credibility.

The solution?

Try a Strategy Session. Think about offering a 60- or 90-minute strategy session at a discounted rate. If your hourly rate is $200, you might offer a 90-minute session for the same rate.

What you can give freely is the 10 minutes it takes to get connected, find out what your potential client's challenge is, and give them the opportunity to hire you for one of your business services, or a strategy session.

If you aren't ready for that approach, here are a few ideas for making you free consultations more fruitful:

Ask diagnostic, open-ended questions:

Get inside your potential client's pain and frustration by asking questions that reveal the full range of their goals, challenges and needs.

Empathize and be authentic:

Tell people you understand their dilemma. Assure them that the territory they're in is familiar to you, and something you are well trained and experienced to solve.

Focus on the big deal benefits of solving those challenges:

People who want to land a job or get a raise or build a better website or write a better press release, are motivated by what they value most. Yes, they want to solve the issue at hand, but what's more important are the values they will honor by doing so - like freedom, security, joy, beauty, and possibility. So rather than focusing solely on the features or process of how you work, ask them questions that help them understand why they want what they want.

Share your strategy

Once you've built trust, you can then focus on the features or the process of how you work. Once your potential client is invested in the benefits of your solution, will they be more open to hearing how you work.

Give your potential clients some homework

This is where you give some of your best advice, and some direction for handling a particular piece of the work.

If you're a website designer, you might ask them to complete some branding questions.

If you're a productivity trainer, you might ask them to survey their employers about their email program issues.

If you're a divorce mediator, you might give them a few pointers for having a conversation with their partner about a sticky issue.

If you're a landscaper, you might ask them to take photos of gardens they love.

Ask for the business

Diagnostic questions are also helpful in closing. You might say, "I'd love to work with you. What's your timeline for getting this project handled?" Or, "When would you like to begin?" Or, "What else do you need to know to get started?"

Use NO as an opportunity for clarity

If your potential client is unsure and not ready to commit, ask more diagnostic questions, like:

What seems to be in the way of making a decision?

What do you need to know to be comfortable saying yes?

Who are the decision makers?

What have you budgeted for this?

Would a payment plan be helpful?

By the way, NO is also an opportunity to offer the Strategy Session as a way of dipping their toes in before committing to your program or service.

The women in the ALM/Corporate Counsel survey who held the top positions in their law departments—chief legal officers and general counsel—reported an average total cash compensation of $575,200, while their male counterparts pocketed an average of $723,700. Female deputy chief legal officers surveyed brought home an average of $316,400 in total cash compensation, while men in the same positions made an average $386,700. Total cash compensation was calculated in the survey as a combination of salary reported as of March 1, 2013, and annual cash bonus for 2012.

Smaller bonuses for women accounted for a large part of the disparity between the numbers for top-level men and women corporate counsel. The survey indicated that GC and CLO women and their deputies made around 40 percent less in bonus payouts than men in the same roles.

The women in the ALM/Corporate Counsel survey who held the top positions in their law departments—chief legal officers and general counsel—reported an average total cash compensation of $575,200, while their male counterparts pocketed an average of $723,700. Female deputy chief legal officers surveyed brought home an average of $316,400 in total cash compensation, while men in the same positions made an average $386,700. Total cash compensation was calculated in the survey as a combination of salary reported as of March 1, 2013, and annual cash bonus for 2012.

Smaller bonuses for women accounted for a large part of the disparity between the numbers for top-level men and women corporate counsel. The survey indicated that GC and CLO women and their deputies made around 40 percent less in bonus payouts than men in the same roles.

First and foremost, understand that bonuses are negotiated.The Grindstone gave eight tips to help you negotiate your bonus some time ago and the advice is all the more important today. Career coach Rebecca Rapple advised women to remember that they are tough negotiators. "Realize," she said,

that it is a negotiation! Many people (but especially women) accept their year end bonus, or lack thereof, as a fact, rather than a negotiation. Far too often we hear people saying “You should feel lucky to have a job” and other self-defeating phrases. While, in reality, companies are lucky to have you! And its important to ask – and negotiate – for the compensation you deserve.”

This story is not about what your law firm can do for you because it's not going to do anything to advance the careers of women either because it's the right thing to do or because it's the smart thing to do (i.e., good law firm management).

How many times do I have to say that people do not voluntarily giveup economic power and will never voluntarily change the status quo as long as it's delivering money and power to the people who already have it (who will eventually nevertheless learn that the wheel of fortune is always turning but that's another post for another day).

For anyone who believes law firms are supporting their women, please note that the women who would be willing to share effective means of advancing their Big Law careers were not permitted to talk to Marketplace because those means are not official firm policy.

Women make up about 16 percent of equity partners at big law firms -- a number that has barely budged in a decade. This despite the fact women graduate from law school in almost the same numbers as men. Women partners also earn on average just under $500,000 a year, while men earn $734,000, according to a recent survey of lawyers' compensation. Some female lawyers have had enough of these discrepancies, and they're pushing for change.

Women lawyers at top firms hate drawing attention to their gender. "We've been told for decades that if we talk about women's issues we're whining," says Victoria Pynchon, a litigator for 25 years and co-founder of a consultancy called She Negotiates. She says a new generation of women is realizing they can't get to the top just by working hard and following the rules.

"Women lawyers in these major law firms are saying good bye to all of that, and they are exercising power without being given the authority to do so," she says. "And this is something that men do without even thinking about it."

For example, she says at one large firm, when they vote for a new equity partner, women partners now come together to support the best female candidate.

That may sound like a small thing, but by bloc voting, they improve that candidate's chance of getting elected. Women at that firm didn't want to talk on the record because what they're doing is not official firm policy.

What is the one thing male AmLaw200 lawyers possess in relative abundance that women lack?

Time.

And yet, pricing legal services based on the time it takes a lawyer to do her work is the only truly important metric for retention and promotion in the AmLaw. Well, that and cronyism, of course.

But I'm not talking cronyism in this season's issue of the Journal published bi-yearly by the Florida Association of Women Lawyers. As I say at the link, "if measuring value by time had prevented men from marrying and having children, they would long ago have found a different way to measure the worth of their work."

At work, we sorely need more women in leadership positions. We already know from considerable research that companies are better off when they have more women in top management roles, especially when it comes to innovation. Professors Dezso and Ross have recently shown that between 1992 and 2006, when companies introduced women onto their top management teams, they generated an average of 1 percent more economic value, which typically meant more than $40 million.

Then there's this:

Along with guiding much of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s philanthropy, Melinda played a pivotal role in shaping the Giving Pledge. . . When Bill Gates and Warren Buffett convened dinners for billionaires to discuss philanthropy, Ms. Gates made sure that wives were invited, too.

But if you believe marrying a top dog is all a woman needs to do to change the course of history, be advised that when men have traditional wives at home, they discount the value of the work done by their women colleagues and associates.

As my great good friend, Gloria Feldt says, there are really No Excuses to bury our heads in the sand to our sisters' suffering nor to stop playing the game our education, experience, skills and, yes, privilege have prepared us for.

Need a few places to get started?

Support The New Agenda and Take the Lead. Learn how to and then negotiate your true market value thereby raising the wage, income and leadership anchor for all women. There's no better place to learn that than at She Negotiates.

Don't let the boys beat you in the Reindeer Games. If the customs and practices of your workplace tend to reward male metrics (like time on their hands) subvert the system and play by your own rules. If you're in the professions or business, don't ask for part-time status when you have children. Just take the time you need.

You're already working 22% longer and 10% faster before you expect the same reward as your male colleagues do.

Remember that every woman in leadership inspires dozens, sometimes hundreds, thousands or millions of other women to say "I can do that too."

Be a leader. Inspire. Value yourself wherever you are on the bell curve. Demand that value.

Our column, Ask the Negotiators, depends on you for its success.Research shows that negotiators learn best when working out their own bargaining challenges instead of attending classes where they're asked to negotiate hypotheticals whose facts are limited and often don't pertain to the negotiation environment in which men and women are required to have an often difficult conversation leading to agreement.

So please, send your toughest negotiation problems to us. We rarely achieve salary increases of less than 20% for our clients whether they're seeking a raise or making a lateral move. We've helped business people sell their small companies to larger ones, assisted others in having difficult conversations with their current employers as a last step before job hunting, and have helped organizations get their people working together as a team again.

There's no negotiation problem too tough for us and if we don't know the answer off the top of our heads, we do the research necessary or seek out the industry experts who can guide us - and you - in the right direction.

Ladies and gentlemen! Start your engines! Life is about to get easier and work far better and more remunerative.

We advise HR people as well so its not all employee related. We deal with companies, entrepreneurs, non-profits and individuals who are all seeking to get what they deserve - a happy, fair, productive and just workplace for everyone.

Researcher Gerben Van Kleef of the University of Amsterdam found that only low-power negotiators were strongly influenced by their opponent’s expressions of anger; they made larger concessions than when no anger was expressed. High-power negotiators barely seemed to notice the other side’s emotions; they identified their own true bargaining interests and offered only the concessions necessary to reach a good deal.

How can you gain this advantage?

Immediately before negotiating with someone you know to be emotional and demanding, reflect on a time you negotiated with a strong BATNA. Recall your sense of confidence and control. Generating psychological power can immunize you from your opponent’s angry tactics.

Listen.

We're all somewhat afraid of conflict, at least those of us who are not sociopaths.

Men and women both want their days to pass without having accusations hurled at them, without hearing what a frenemy is saying behind their backs, and without stirring their colleagues or clients to anger.

Women, however, do tend to react to a negotiation challenge somewhat more fearful of an angry response than do men.

I've said before that men can claim to be unemotional only because they don't believe anger to be an emotion and I think there's more truth to that than humor.

I had a client once who was negotiating her bargaining partners toward a million per year. That's what everyone in her niche was making. The men with whom she was negotiating gave her many reasons why she was an outlier and worth less than her peers (all of whom were men and most of whom were twenty years her senior). But it was she who they listened to at industry conferences. She was the expert. They'd just found a cozy retirement niche.

Eventually, of course, her bargaining partners grew testy and finally one pitched all all-out temper tantrum worthy of a two-year old, telling her she'd never succeed, never reach the heights of the profession she'd already scaled. Told her she was fooling herself. Told her she didn't deserve it. Told her to get a grip on herself and remember who she was.

We responded with the best negotiation tactic for a bargaining partner who betrays us. We played "tit for tat," punishing the miscreant proportionally by simply going 36 hours without returning his phone call. When he finally did reach her, he apologized and, on top of that, increased his last offer without responding to a counter. In other words, he apologized by bargaining against himself, just about the only rule young attorneys are taught by their elders. Not to bargain against yourself.

So if you're worried that your negotiation partner is going to get angry at you, don't worry. Not only is "tit for tat" a powerful game changer, but recent research cited by the Harvard Program on Negotiation shows that only low-power negotiators [are] strongly influenced by their opponent’s expressions of anger.

Those negotiators who didn't trust their own power made larger concessions than when no anger was expressed. High power negotiators, however, barely seemed to notice the other side’s emotions; they identified their own true bargaining interests and offered only the concessions necessary to reach a good deal.

Here's the best news, anyone who wishes can gain the "high power" advantage. According to Harvard, our best strategy, particularly if we're anticipating an emotion response is to reflect on a time you negotiated with a strong [alternative to a negotiated resolution]. Recall your sense of confidence and control. Generating psychological power can immunize you from your opponent’s angry tactics.

Got that? Add a power pose (arms above your head, hands behind it, standing tall to trigger a flood of testosterone) and you'll be the leader of the pack.

You already know that, of course, and many of you have given up on it altogether. It's so well understood that even the ABA knows about it! Check out Do Women's Initiatives Work in this month's issue of the ABA Journal right here.

It's Just Beginning

But I have breaking news for you. It's not over. It's just beginning.

As one AmLaw 50 senior woman recently told me, until '09, her firm's women's initiative was flowery. In '09, the law firm's women decided to grow it some balls. That's what she said. Verbatim. Those are the women lawyers I remember from my youth. Ballsy. No nonsense. Get it done.

If you'd like to put your poorly funded, management ignored women'sinitiative on steroids, I've got a panel that is going to tell you how to make it fly. For you. Strategically.

Not A "Feel Good" Session Nor A Pity Party

This is not a "feel good" session, nor a pity party. But you know what? I've never heard women lawyers throw a pity party from the day I entered law school in 1977 until today.

This panel will also not ask you to expend more energy than you're already expending to be the greatest lawyer you can be. This is a session that will tell you what your law firm should be doing to make your women's careers better.

In addition to the law firm piece, we're going to put the strength of other women lawyers behind you. Because this is not "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" or even "lean in." This is activism.

Merle has enough good ideas fill an entire weekend retreat but we're going to help her squeeze her good advice into this single session. Tackle her after the panel is over and pepper her with your most pressing issues.

I want every woman lawyer to know that they do not have to work harder, faster or better to achieve parity in the workplace with their male colleagues.

All we have to do is support one another, which this month includes digging into that ABA Journal Magazine that you usually just toss into the trash.

I'm linking to three reports on law firm women's initiatives and they're all a little depressing.

Still, if you read past the pessimism, you'll realize we're at a tipping point - that the disappointing percentage of women in leadership roles in the law, business and finance (less than 20% in all sectors) is also reason to be optimistic about the future.

As Gloria Feldt of Take the Lead counsels, if each woman in a leadership role would sponsor one other woman who is poised to take on such a role, we could double those disappointing percentages in five years or less.

The development of two-tier partnerships, the lengthening of the time periods to make partner and equity partner, the reduction in the number of equity partners, the creation of new categories of permanent associates and permanent non- equity partners, the expanded number of permanent of counsel, and the demand for increased billable hours, have combined to increase income for a shrinking group of equity partners and to disadvantage women in large law firms.

Finally,the National Association of Women Lawyers' 2012 study of law firm women's initiatives tells a story of underfunding, the lack of meaningful goals and the absence of any metrics to measure the success of those initiatives, all of which would lead a cynical person to conclude that most of those initiatives are more window dressing than they are genuine attempts to address the problems not only of women but of high attrition rates that firms in our new austere economy can no longer afford.

As that study reports:

fewer than half of all women’s initiatives are evaluated annually by management. Similarly, fewer than half of all women’ initiatives submit written evaluations. Moreover, it is not clear that the reporting and evaluation functions focus on specific goals. Some 40% of firms report no specific criteria at all for their evaluation. Of those who report goal-related evaluation criteria, there is often no connection to concrete advancement criteria. Thus, descriptions of evaluation criteria were often along the lines of “accomplishment of goals and activities identified at the start of each year” or “number of events, quality of events, participation level.”

All of that said, I remain optimistic because I've been here before, when I first started practice and some of the firm's clients said "I don't want a woman on the litigation team." My boss, male, said what we women should be saying today, Then you don't want this firm because Vickie Pynchon is the best associate I've got.

Thank you, Geoff.

We can do it. We can do it without tying ourselves in knots to conform to outmoded gender roles. We can do it without offending anyone - clients or colleagues. We can do it authentically within our own unique personalities.

We can do it because women's diverse views destroy "group think" and add women's unique collaborative abilities to an entrenched zero-sum system. Most importantly, we can raise the bar of excellence for every firm where management understands that more women in leadership = a more profitable business.

A survey released today by Citi and LinkedIn in conjunction with Citi’s Connect Professional Women’s Network on LinkedIn finds that one of women’s biggest obstacles to career satisfaction may be themselves – only 1 in 4 professional women have asked for a raise in the past year, yet of those who asked, 75% received a salary increase.

On the heels of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, the survey also investigates whether women are really pulling back from leadership positions and if so, why? When asked if they could see themselves rising to a leadership position at their current employer, only 38% of women polled said yes, citing lack of opportunity, time and loyalty to their companies as the top three reasons why they’re not planning to advance.

Corporate profits have been soaring for some time now. What/who is the engine of those profits?

You, the American worker, are!

That means you deserve a raise. Have you gotten one lately? Not according to most sources.

We routinely help women negotiate raises between 15 and 30%.

Our success reflects the undeniable fact that our clients deserve these raises but haven't been getting them. We're not rocket scientists but we do know how to assess and then help you negotiate your true market value.

I scored BIG when I hired Victoria Pynchon. She helped me successfully negotiate a job promotion, 40+% raise, and new title -- all at my current employer. And this was during a recession! Vickie benchmarked salaries for me, realistically evaluated my options, helped me understand the motives and pressure of my employer, and advised me at every step of the way throughout the negotiations. And she guided me in developing a long-term strategic plan for my career.

"Hourly wages ticked up 4 cents in April to an average $23.87, rising at about the same tepid 2% annual pace since the recovery began in mid-2009.

But taking inflation into account, they're virtually flat. Workers who rely on paychecks for their income have been running in place, financially speaking. Adjusting for inflation, an average worker who was paid $49,650 at the end of 2009 is making about $545 less now and that's before taxes and deductions.

According to this month's Harpers, "even among the well-educated, the fear of unemployment deters workers from demanding wage hikes, particularly when joblessness is pervasive."

Let's not let the spectre of unemployment, or permit the unsupported corporate excuse of "the recession" deter us from reaping some small portion of the benefit that has flowed to the top of the American economic ladder in the past few years.

As one of those mega-negotiation training firms that advertises in airplane magazines says, "you don't get what you deserve; you get what you negotiate."

Find us and call us at She Negotiates and let us help you negotiate what you deserve.

Despite our focus on closing the gender wage gap, we serve men as well as women because a rising tide raises all ships.

Last night at the cocktail party after my presentation (slideshow below) dozens of women approached me to tell me what their "super powers" were.

Institutional Knowledge.

Ability to assign work.

Persuasiveness.

Influence over firm power brokers.

Willingness to study for and take foreign bar exams (a recurring nightmare in my book, but hey! "how is the firm recompensing you to study for and take it?")

Ability to promote younger lawyers.

Ability to form relationships with the firm's clients.

Speaking ability.

Writing ability.

Ability to: take a great deposition, write jury instructions, try a case.

A large social-professional network that can be tapped for favors and referrals.

And on and on and on.

If you have not made a list of your "super powers" please do so now. Ask yourself how they can benefit your career. Then ask yourself whether you're using them effectively to do so and if not, why not.

Do we have to be this successful to rearrange the world to fit one woman's life? Or could we simply realize that this is what WorkLife looks like on the day it stops being a man's world.

Scandal's show-runner Sonda Rhimes' executive-Mommy day.

As part of her Shondaland production company, Rhimes oversees some 550 actors, writers, crew members and producers, and her days are optimized to do so. In the morning, she gets her older daughter, Harper, who is 10, off to school and then contends with whatever is most urgent: writing, giving notes on a script and watching casting videos. The televisions in her office and home are connected to a system that allows her to watch real-time editing by her editors. Both of her daughters have rooms across the hall from her office at work. The younger, a perfectly chubby-cheeked 1-year-old named Emerson, comes in every day, clambering onto Rhimes’s lap during meetings.

I'm not blaming the guys when I say that the historic accident of the modern workplace wouldn't have required men to choose between work and family. They would long ago have figured out how to have both.

Oh, wait a minute. They did. It was called "wives."

In today's economy, few men have the luxury of "wives" and even fewer working mothers have the luxury of the services wives and mothers of an earlier era provided - 24-hour child, husband and extended-family care.

Nearly every law student in the country from the oldest grad to the youngest aspirant, learns the meaning of "intent" in civil law from the case of Garratt v. Dailey.

You may not want to hurt Bill, but if you put an apple on his head, raise your shotgun and pull the trigger, the law will say you intended to kill him in the highly likely event that your William Tell act causes Bill's death.

The rule that Garratt applies to a five-year old's decision to pull out the chair out an adult woman is about to sit in is this - if the defendant knows with a substantial certainty that his act will result in harm, he must be presumed to have intended it.

As the Survey reports, even though women’s initiatives have been in effect for at least a decade, "what such initiatives actually do, and the impact they have on women in firms, is all too often not clear and at worst, open to criticism bordering on cynicism." More particularly,

fewer than half of all women’s initiatives are evaluated annually by management. Similarly, fewer than half of all women’ initiatives submit written evaluations. Moreover, it is not clear that the reporting and evaluation functions focus on specific goals. Some 40% of firms report no specific criteria at all for their evaluation. Of those who report goal-related evaluation criteria, there is often no connection to concrete advancement criteria. Thus, descriptions of evaluation criteria were often along the lines of “accomplishment of goals and activities identified at the start of each year” or “number of events, quality of events, participation level.”

Why should you attend the Second Annual National Girlfriends' Networking Day?

Because

The women in your firm may mentor you (teach you the ropes) but not sponsor you (put their skin in your game).

Or the women in your firm may do nothing for you.

Or, worse, the women in your firm may sabotage you. (Men will too so don’t think this is about "cat fights" or "Queen Bees" or any other women hating tropes).

This is about the accumulation of wealth and power and no gender owns avarice or generosity. Speaking of which, a huge round of applause to Proskauer in Century City and Arnold & Porter in San Francisco for lending their offices and catering support to the live streaming events in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

We've been talking about women's negotiation deficits for so long that we've completely neglected the men. This post is an attempt to cure that omission. Listen guys! We care about you. And we'd like to help you with your negotiation problem.

In Speaking Out About Women And Power, U.C. Berkeley Psychology Professor Tania Lombrozo describes a study in which women experienced gender blow back when they voiced their opinions “too ardently.” The social scientists conducting that study asked a group of men and women to evaluate a hypothetical CEO who was described as offering opinions as much as possible or as withholding opinions.

Unsurprisingly, female CEOs who offered opinions frequently were judged less competent and less suited to leadership than their sister CEOs who withheld their opinions. Equally unsurprising was the way in which the study judged the men – as more competent and better suited to leadership if they spoke up often and less so if they didn’t.

Too many people have concluded from studies like these that women are stuck between a gender rock and leadership hard place but men are not.

As Lombrozo is quick to note, however, men faced a complementary danger: of being perceived as poor leaders if they didn’t voice their opinions. Members of both sexes were penalized for failing to conform to traditional gender stereotypes.

Listen. We are all judged according to the culture’s expectation for our behavior. Women are expected to be kind, patient, tolerant, loving, giving and self-effacing. Men are expected to be judgmental, tough, self-seeking and self-promoting. We all suffer social sanctions – from harsh judgments to electoral defeats – when we step outside of society’s expectations.

Those who would caution us to “act our role” or suffer the consequences, however, are missing the bigger picture, as are those who urge us to ape the style of the opposite gender. Let’s take negotiation as our example.

In a recent article at Huffington Post, Joan Williams writes that women don’t negotiate because they’re not idiots, citing yet another study confirming the imposition of social sanctions on women who negotiate outside their gender role. Sara Laschever, co-author, with Linda Babcock, of Women Don’t Ask and Ask for It, immediately dropped by to assert that Williams’ article mischaracterized Babcock’s findings, explaining that the "study used only used one negotiation script, in which both the male and female negotiators asked for higher pay in a fairly aggressive way.

This year is the 20th anniversary of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings which legitimized women's complaints of sexual harassment in the workplace. This is a particularly timely year in women's professional history to revisit the Hill-Thomas hearings in light of the DSK, Schwarzgenegger and Weiner scandals.

This panel of two of the most noted leaders of the Second Wave Women's Movement and two Gen-Y feminist activists will talk about solutions to a problem to which no one yet has an answer.

My small start-up company, She Negotiates Consulting and Training, is working to promote women to positions of leadership through their own efforts within a supportive community of women in business and the professions.

She Negotiates is a Diamond Patron Sponsor of the South Carolina Women Lawyers' Conference and we invite you to sponsor this historic event too.

As a former attorney (and current mediator and AAA arbitrator) I am all too familiar with BigLaw's failure to retain and promote their women. We at She Negotiates believe that only by encouraging women to support other women will we finally close the wage, income and leadership gap that seems so intractable.

The next firm to become a Diamond Sponsor can introduce the Feldt-Steinem, et al. panel and receive four tickets to the event. Here's the Sponsor Form. Please donate today. No donation is too small!

Over at B-School today, you'll find a collection of blog posts that will give you an entire semester's worth of negotiation knowledge, training and (if you practice) experience. Don't miss it. Excerpt below and link here.

Learning to be a great negotiator is a skill that will serve you in a variety of situations. Whether you're buying a car, setting a salary, or in an international business deal, negotiation skills are essential to getting what you want. These blog posts share tips, strategies, and more for becoming a better negotiator.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your settlement engines. Your clients will repay you with more work than you can handle!

Pearl Harbor is unfortunately a trending Twitter topic because millions of little microphones have been given to people unable to think things through.

People who say the Japanese “deserve” it, like those who believe that AIDS is God’s punishment for immorality, are suffering from a cognitive bias called Fundamental Attribution Error. Here at She Negotiates, we’re deeply concerned with cognitive biases because they cause otherwise kind and rational people to believe that their neighbors are mean-spririted, ill-willed or downright evil.

And that prevents us from being compassionate, helping out in times of crisis or negotiating the resolution of disputes.

Instead of becoming mired in the debate between the Japan-deserved-it tweeters and those who call the tweeters stupid jerks, let’s use the trending Pearl Harbor-Japanese earthquake topic as a teaching moment.

Today, the newspaper of record for Los Angeles, its own readership jumpy and restless, tells us that the Japanese are maintaining order by exhibiting behavior (“impeccable manners”) that most Westerners would consider overly deferential and needlessly self-sacrificing.

The Women Don't Ask author quoted her keynote fee as $10,000, which is an eminently fair price. A man of similar provenance would have asked for at least twenty grand. If you’re skeptical about that, check out the fees at BigSpeak which lists a couple of male Harvard Business Professors at $40,000 + (Clayton M. Christensen) and $20,001 to $40,000 (John A. Davis) while quoting a couple of women at the top of the corporate ladder at $7,500 to $10,000 (former Accenture managing partner and author Susan Bulter) and $10,001 to $20,000 (Kate White, Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan and New York Times Best-Selling Author).

On reflection, this sui generis extravaganza likely required a division of duties and multiplication of talent from the beginning. If Spider-Man’sticket sales cool in response to its present deficiencies, Charlie Sheen, on temporary hiatus from reality, should still be available to make this multi-vehicle pile-up of a Broadway musical into a hot ticket again.

It's not that we believe that economic power concentrated in any gender will necessarily be better, it's that the natural order of things – women and men together in roughly equal numbers powering life on the planet – will necessarily be better. If it’s not God’s plan, it is surely the plan of nature which got us to where we now sit – ascendent above the planet’s other animals – the result of opposable thumbs and bio-diversity.

If negotiation is a conversation leading to agreement, that conversation requires two people. Meaning that you (yeah, you!) with your dead Toyota actually have a voice and something to say to Mr. Pointy-Shoes at the car dealership. >Before laughing at or trembling before that guy, enter his point of view for a moment. How is he going to try to work with you as a customer? He wants to maximize the dealership's profit because he makes a living by skimming a small part of that profit off of the deal as a commission. You need something from him, but he also needs something from you. You’ve got the money, which is always a good negotiation position to be in. Remember the “golden rule?” He who has the gold makes the rules.

You deserve a raise this year because you are working harder, longer and faster than you were before the recession. And as msnbc reported in 2009, you are doing so for less, not more, money.

That means you are not only doing your own job, you’re also doing the jobs your laid off colleagues were doing. You’ll be difficult to replace because of that. Not only because John and Mary’s jobs are not in your historic employment description, but because fewer people will want to take on the work you’re doing now for the salary you’re now being paid.

Your employer may need to hire two people to replace you. He or she will also have to incur the expense of hiring one or more new employees.

You are more valuable than you believe yourself to be. You therefore have more bargaining strength than you believe yourself to have.

Whether we’re working on the transformation of women’s lives in the workplace, the home, or on the national stage, an unbelievably powerful network of women is growing, most of it under the radar of today’s power structure. There are numerous ways into this network – through finance, law, leadership, science, entrepreneurism, politics and dozens of others. And there’s no better place to start than by buying, reading, and applying the lessons of Gloria Feldt’s No Excuses.

In a recent effort to remedy the persistent problem of women performing poorly on math tests, researchers at the University of Chicago asked women to write about their test-anxiety or about their personal values. It didn’t matter whether the women wrote about their values or about their fears, having journaled in preparation for their math tests, their scores improved one full grade. See The Write Way to Reduce Test Anxiety at U.S. World and News Report.

[Researcher] Sian Beilock [said] that “[o]ne small snippet of writing can be enough to boost performance. Writing for eight or 10 minutes before the test put anxious students on a par with students who didn’t worry.”

Here’s the most important finding for women who continue to resist negotiating on their own behalves.

“Women who tended to believe that men were better than women at physics showed the greatest improvement” in test scores when they wrote about their values or fears in preparation for their examinations.

Journal your values and journal your fear

I’m particularly pleased to learn of this research because the She Negotiates training is conducted on an online journaling-learning platform. My business partner and I have long wondered why the women who take this course nearly always report a transformative result that impacts all areas of their lives.

“It’s because of the word journal,” I’ve said to my partner. “It allows women to go deep.”

We cannot simply give women negotiation strategies and tactics, expecting them to go out into the commercial world and use them.

We need to provide women with a community learning experience in which they’re able to connect their fear of negotiation to the culture in which that fear developed like the old consciousness raising sessions of the Second Wave Women’s Movement. We need not only negotiation skills, but the confidence and sense of entitlement to use them.

We kicked off the new year over at ForbesWoman this past Sunday with my short think-post on gay marriage and the razor's edge on which we women negotiate for ourselves - both of which I tied to our fear of losing the benefits and the restraining influences of traditional gender roles. See Negotiating Sex and Gender here. There's also a bit of instructive back-and-forth in the comments on the question whether the income gap is a systemic problem or simply the result of women being . . . well . . . lazy bitches. Those who know me well can marvel at my admirable restraint.

On Monday, The Daily Asker, Roxana Popescu, penned the most popular She Negotiates post of the week - Six Things Every Woman Should Ask for in 2011. Roxana is a black-belt "asker," taking the opportunity to negotiate literally everything. She'll be adding six more categories of "asks" over at our ForbesWoman blog today so keep an eye peeled for it.

And though Roxana doesn't know it yet, we're planning on having her lead day-long bargaining expeditions in 2011 for those who don't notice the dozens of opportunities that present themselves to us every day for a little haggling. Stay tuned for that announcement over at our home She Negotiates site. For more information on Roxana's "asking" quest, see Day One: Can I Ask for Something Every Day for a Year.

On Tuesday, She Negotiates rested so that Wednesday could bring you Forget Resolutions: Disrupt and Execute in 2011, by She Negotiates co-founder Lisa Gates. I'd just been telling a book publicist how I'd been dying the death of a thousand book promotion cuts. A couple of hundred here, a thousand there, went out to consultants in 2010 who simply threw me back on my own promotional resources with a little advice about working different or harder. That's what I hired you for! If you're suffering from a similar consultant-overload dis-ease, go no further than consulting with Lisa Gates where the focus is implement and execute. She changed my life. Let her change yours for the better in 2011.

Yesterday, our Gen-Y blogger Katie Phillips, recently graduated from the Tisch School of Arts at NYU, wrote in despair and celebration of entering the unknown in Negotiating Uncertainty: Gen-Y Women are Busy Being Born. Our boomer readers will see themselves in the same circumstances thirty or forty years ago, but this post is not for us. It's Gen-Y to Gen-Y and one of the finest pieces of writing you're likely to see anywhere on ForbesWoman. Really. Check it out.

With part 2 of Roxana's six tips for 2011 today, we'll close the week in asking, haggling, bargaining, negotiating, trading, and bartering for the first week of the new year. Please let us know which topics would be most useful to you for us to cover as we make 2011 not just the Year of Recovery, but the Year of Abundance!

the following suggestions are a way of re-anchoring that value so that your starting point is greater than what you made this year

recalibrate your value according to what you are worth in your employer's hands, i.e., what does your employer save or make based upon the work you do (this may require research on your part)

use that value in setting your desired compensation (also include the cost to your employer of replacing irreplaceable you)

ASK DIAGNOSTIC QUESTIONS

begin asking your employer and superiors diagnostic questions (questions designed to learn what your employer needs, desires and prefers and what your employer is most concerned about in regard to the continued profitability of his/her business)

"how's business" is a great open ended diagnostic question that does not assume the answer

more specific questions include "what does the company need to accomplish in the first quarter of 2011 to meet its financial goals?"; "what are the company's first quarter financial goals?" "what do you see as the primary obstacles to achieving those goals?" "what do you see as the primary drivers of success in reaching those goals" etc. etc.

don't ask these questions impromptu; write them down as a way of brainstorming the most powerful questions and those that would be easiest to ask

"Victoria Pynchon's negotiation skills crush cultural bias, gender barriers and even fears about the tumultuous economy. She taught me to conquer my fears with courage and navigate contentious negotiation, while demanding my market value. Her one-on-one supportive coaching techniques trump transformation. Working with her has triggered a personal evolutionary spiral into a new way of doing business with confidence, the fruits of which have knocked down walls in every part of my life. I felt supported through the entire process and experienced immediate results."

"Lisa Gates reached into the very core of my being in order to bring me back into the reality of my dreams. Her talk is real and her methods concise. I no longer doubt what I'm doing...instead I speak, write, and live, knowing exactly why I do what I do and I realize that the goals I have set for myself are entirely up to me and attainable."

Most law firms state their commitment to diversity and inclusivity, prominently featuring on their diversity pages the pathetically few women and minorities in positions of genuine economic power in the firm. Are they walking the talk? Let me count the ways.

O'Melveny & Myers ~ We attract, retain, and promote people of all backgrounds, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, age, religion, disability, or any other group characteristics.

O’Melveny & Myers LLP has been named to The American Lawyer’s 2010 A-List, which recognizes the nation’s most elite law firms for stellar performance in the areas of revenue generation, pro bono commitment, associate satisfaction, and diversity representation. This is the Firm’s third consecutive year on the list of 20 firms judged best at balancing the practice of law with their obligations to the profession.

I don't mean to pick on O'Melveny. It's representative of the whole. Any AmLaw100 law firm that would like to crow about its great track record in retaining and promoting women and minorities, please do drop by with your results and suggestions to your peers for improvements in these figures that the smartest guys in the room just can't seem to be capable of figuring out.

Today, Forbes Corporate Social Responsibility Blog is commencing a series on how a serious commitment to diversity results in improved bottom line performance. I commend that series to the attention of the real powers that be inside AmLaw 100 law firms and they cannot be found in the Diversity Programs, of that I can assure you. Here's the intro to the McDonald's diversity program series:

How does a company that serves 56 million customers a day across 118 countries become a leader in diversity hiring and retention? According to the inclusion and diversity team at McDonald’s, it takes a combination of knowing how to leverage a multicultural customer base, a C-suite-led commitment to talent management, and academic-style learning labs.

If you're a woman, like me, we have our own garden to tend. We leave the Fortune 50 and the AmLaw100 out of discouragement. But part of that discouragement is born of our own diminished expectations and failures to build serious rain-making activities into our daily practices along with our failures to demand assignments to the types of cases where partners are made.

If your law firm or corporation does not have a serious diversity program, click your ruby slippers three times, say "there's no place like the board room," take the She Negotiates signature course, and kick a little butt.

Remember, as Gloria Steinem said, "the truth shall set you free, but first, it will piss you off."

How do we "sell" the nation on the idea that women's work is as valuable as men's? Despite the fact that 90 years have passed since women were given the vote and 40 since an entire generation of women raised their voices against unequal treatment under the law, we continue to make a third of what our men do.

What's up with that? and why the Coke ad?

What's up with that is this: we're not negotiating our true market value because we believe it is worth one-third less than men believe their true market value to be. That's what the research shows. Instead of getting angry, let's finally "get even" by learning our true market value; gathering the tools to ask for it; and, then just go get it.

Coca-Cola, one of the most successful products ever to grace our planet, wasn't always a world-wide beauty pageant winner. It once had to sell itself. It's SODA POP for goodness sakes. But it didn't sell itself as soda pop. It sold itself as the staff of life ~ bread. It wasn't a luxury ~ something our then-post-depression post-war parents were not keen on buying. It was a necessity.

So how do we sell ourselves as necessary to the economy and as valuable as bread and butter? Come on over to She Negotiates and we'll teach you how.

Our next course begins on September 13 and you can take it in your jammies! A warning: this is no ordinary e-class. It's a lot of hard work.

If you're ready to upset the apple cart and apply a little elbow grease to the gears and levers of a society that still fails to recognize our value, come on by!

If negotiation is a conversation with agreement as its goal, we should not be wasting our time arguing with one another about whose point of view is the best. We should be talking to one another about how we can both achieve as many of the goals we both want to achieve as a result of our conversation.

You do not have to change anyone's mind to give them what they want to get. And you don't have to grudgingly accept half a loaf (a portion of the pie) if, unbeknownst to one another, you possess five items of value your bargaining partner wants or needs, and your bargaining partner possesses a dozen items of value you want or need. In a really effective negotiation, you may find that together you and your bargaining partner can whip up a dozen pies and end up with more than either of you had imagined.

Wouldn't you like to be learning how to do this instead of working on that sanctions motion for your adversary's bad faith refusal to answer interrogatories?

And gentlemen, tell your women friends. Husbands and significant others benefit from this course as well! My own happily came back from the gym the other day saying "I did what you taught me; I got two extra months of gym membership free."

They wanted that other woman who speaks on the topic of women negotiating. You know the one . . . what's her name. Yes, that's her. The annual meeting committee gave her a ring and she quoted them $10,000 for an hour keynote. To be fair, an hour keynote takes all day. First, you've got to travel, then stay over night, then, if you're really serious about being of service to women lawyers, you get up early and listen to the morning speaker, talk to your table mates, find out what their challenges are, and, then alter, ever so slightly, your noon keynote to deliver exactly what this particular unique group of women need to hear. You stay after, of course, to answer questions and sell copies of your book, which is, after all, your time, the time you'd be spending anyway spreading the good news that women can negotiate away the glass ceiling and the pay gap and their kids' private school tuitions. Because that's just how you roll. So it's never just an hour.

Still.

$10,000.

"Did you negotiate with her?" I asked.

"The search committee didn't even try," said my friend. "They figured her price was retail."

I don't mind being second choice. That other woman, well, shoot, she pretty much started the whole women-negotiating-revolution. I get it. So I gave my quote and added, "but I'm not a suit on a hanger at Bloomies. You don't have to buy me retail. Remember some of what I taught you about money and value."

"Uhhhhh, make an aggressive first offer?"

"Well, yes. But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the money is meaningless lesson. You remember. You can't eat or drink it. It won't actually do the surgery nor build an addition to your house. Remember how it just evaporated overnight right before George Bush left office? Remember how your house was worth $500,000 on Monday and two fifty on Tuesday?

'Money has a value only because we give it value. It's only worth what we say it's worth.

"Uhhhh . . . . "

"O.K. I know. I talk too much and too vaguely."

Here's the deal. My price is X + expenses. That's negotiable. I don't tell you it's negotiable because as soon as I do you'll start negotiating! And since it was me who taught you to negotiate, I'm not wild about bargaining with you. The desire to teach is way to strong in me.

"I'm negotiable. So is that other woman, the one whose book title is Ask for It! And money isn't the only measure of value. It would also be of value to me for your women's bar association to sell my book. Of course I'll bring it with me to autograph and the like. But you could also include it on your invitations. If someone in your Bar Association blogs, they could give it a review. If you haven't already pledged that you wouldn't give away anyone's email address, you could give me your mailing list so I can stay in touch with your members. Each of your members also has her own network. We could brainstorm about ways that you could give me the benefit of my pre-speech networking acumen to get more women to your convention. It's hard to sell seats these days. How many people are you expecting? What if we double that? Could you pay me my full fee then?

"None of us is a suit on a rack. And what we can do for one another is so much greater than opening our wallets and shelling out a few dollars that money sometimes seems just laughable. So let me say this again. I know you've heard it before but I want to highlight it here again.

"I am a store of value and you are too. My network, my social capital is a store of the store of value of each member in it. And in that, you and I are both rich.

"Got it?"

My friend, my student, is smiling, even though I can't see that over the telephone.

"I got it."

"Now what was that offer again?"

The next game changing She Negotiates workshop is still open for a few last-minute members. We start on Monday. Don't be a suit on a rack. Join us!

"Anything," she said, "it's genuinely changed the way I do everything. It's not just the shift in my business relationship with [BigBiz, Inc.]. I dumped a boyfriend last week because of our conversations! So, seriously, what would you like me to say?"

My client and I, like the few women commercial litigation clients I had during my twenty-five years as a lawyer (2%?) were quickly becoming friends. And I was proud of her. Truly proud. Like a parent would be.

"I'm proud of you," I finally said, even though I'd been thinking it for weeks. "You've shifted the power in your working relationship and that was difficult to do. You were persistent. You're a first class learner. And you've been brave."

She laughed, the way we women do when we're praised, wanting the moment to pass instead of savoring it a little, particularly when we know deep down we've genuinely achieved something important in our own lives and careers but don't want to appear self-satisfied.

So I said it again. "I'm really proud of you. You've done great work and you never gave up. You didn't fold to the power of BigBiz, Inc. You stood up for yourself."

The numbers below represent an unscientific poll of women in business concerning their skills, attitudes and fears about negotiation. The women were asked to rate their agreement with the statements on a 1-10 scale with 1 being the least agreement and 10 being the greatest agreement. The numbers represent the average answer.

As the July She Negotiates workshop nears, I realize that the one force that might discourage women from participating is the same force the workshop is designed to (and will inevitably) resolve: the effect of the recession on women's already reduced earning power.

But let's take a look at what's at stake here - your economic future.

Why this is Mission Critical

The wage and income gap is stuck at 33% despite the gains made by women in business and the professions over the past thirty years. That's simply unacceptable to me. And because I know the reason why, I've committed myself to spreading the word and teaching the skills necessary to close that gap NOW.

You Know Why the Wage Gap Persists?

I believe I do. I'm no social scientist, but I am an expert negotiator with a master of laws degree in conflict resolution and five years of full-time experience facilitating the negotiated resolution of commercial litigation.

I've been teaching women to negotiate for the past two years and here's what I learned - both on the ground and through extensive research.

Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, in the must-read Ask for It!, define negotiation as "a tool to help change [or preserve] the status quo when change [or preservation] requires the agreement of another person.

Why should women learn to negotiate? Here's the succinct and powerful message Babcock and Laschever have for us:

The consequences of not negotiating in the workplace are pretty extreme. First and foremost, women earn much less money than men over the course of their careers. We calculated that just by not negotiating her first job offer—simply accepting what she's offered rather than negotiating for more—a woman sacrifices anywhere from half a million dollars to one and a half million dollars in lost income over the course of her career. This is a massive loss for a one-time negotiation—for avoiding what is usually no more than five minutes of discomfort—and it's an unnecessary loss, because most employers expect people to negotiate and therefore offer less than they're prepared to pay. And far more men than women negotiate their first offers. Since men also negotiate more than women throughout their careers—or negotiate more aggressively—the financial losses to women can be truly staggering.

Once upon a time, several generations of women all decided at pretty much the same moment that they did not wish to be economically marginalized anymore. They didn't want to see themselves portrayed primarily as air-heads who couldn't successfully drive a car to the market, let alone manage a hedge fund.